Attending a boys school no more prevents your kid from meeting girls than attending a Christian school prevents them from meeting Jews or a private education prevents them meeting oiks.

The only way your child will have a 'well-rounded' upbringing is if you move them around the country every few months. This isn't even touching on the question of whether a 'well-rounded' upbringing in the way you're presenting it is even desirable.

Your position is illogical. Furthermore, denying your child the best possible education because of some half-baked ideology is a wanker's move. If you had attended a religious, single-sex private school, you'd probably see that.

Why are you so argumentative? Surely I will choose to bring my children up as I (and my future beautiful wife) wish, however illogical it may seem to you. IMO (of which none is based on first-hand experience), people who go to private schools tend to be wealthy as it costs a lot of money. I don't know much about religious school, but don't they tend to teach about religion to some extent, and single sex schools also have only one sex which would surely decrease the opportunities of making friends with the opposite sex (all of my friends were school-friends, and I'm sure the majority of people also were friends with predominantly people from their school when they were younger).

Feel free to bring your children up how you like. Makes no difference to me whether your decision is based on sound principles or a bunch of bullshit you've pulled out of your arse.

Consider the following to be for the benefit of anyone:

1) All schools - secular and religious - teach about religions. As someone who has attended both, you can take that as first hand evidence. Furthermore, at a religious school you can at least assume that there's at least one member of staff who knows what they're talking about.

2) As Daniel has already stated (and which I can confirm), attending a single sex school doesn't prevent you from meeting the opposite sex and certainly doesn't stop one from having normal, fulfilling relationships with them.

3) As for how people who go to private schools tending to be wealthy - this is to totally ignore the scholarship system, and also those parents who are not especially wealthy; who instead are willing to almost bankrupt themselves to ensure their child gets a decent go. For my part, I can state that the three people I know who went to private schools didn't have particularly rich parents. And it certainly didn't affect how they related to me, who according to you, should never have been in a position to meet anyone like that.

And again, if you choose not to send your kid to a good school because of some idiotic idea about how associating with rich/white/Christian folk will make him wrong or something - you have problems that I think need to be worked out before you ever think about having kids.

"All my arguments are valid" is not an argument. It's even less of one bearing in mind how the last couple of posts have gone to show how your 'argument' fails to stand up to both logical and factual examination and the real-life experiences of *at least* two separate users.

Also, if my post had been nothing but a personal attack, you'd have a point. But it wasn't, so you don't. Moreover, if you have to pick and choose which parts of a post to respond to, this would suggest that you know you're on shaky ground but still feel you need to have the last word, regardless. This is poor form.

1) We both agree that both religious and non-religious schools teach about religion. However isn't the purpose of a religious school to impart some influence of a specific religion to its pupils? And don't a lot of parents choose such schools for this? I don't see many secular parents sending their children to Islamic schools. I'm not saying this is always the case, but in the majority of cases.

2) I did not say that going to a single-sex school will prevent you from forming 'normal' relationships with the opposite sex. I merely stated that going to a single-sex school will decrease the opportunities to make friends with the opposite sex, especially at a young age, as predominantly most of your friends are school friends, as you spend up to 40 hours a week with these people.

3) I'm sure there are *some* parents are willing to bankrupt themselves to send their children to a private school (which I disagree with in principle, but that is a slightly different issue). However the majority of parents who send their children to private school are wealthy (average cost of private day school approx £9500 in 2007), and I personally don't know anyone who would be able to afford that without bankrupting themselves. Surely the majority of parents at a private school aren't on the verge of bankruptcy, are they?

Also for you to assume that I am talking about "white/Christian" folk, when I have not mentioned them anywhere, along with your personal attacks surely that constitutes as poor form.

plenty of lapsed Christians send their children to ostensibly religious schools merely because, on the whole, they have a reputation for achieving higher academic standards. Which would be what I'd want from a school really. RE is a mandatory GCSE in these schools but the religious element of the school is very rarely prevalent in any other part of the school or curriculum. Catholic schools (which I have experience of) are not stupid; they are aware that their pupils aren't 'religious' as such. The values they are taught are no different to what every child must learn as part of Citizenship studies or whatever that bullshit is called these days. Furthermore most religious schools take on non-religious children in order to be eligible for public funding.

You can have your preferences but I don't really understand what is so beneficial about being able to make friends of both sexes pre 16. Not that it's a bad thing, mind, it's just that I barely spoke to a girl I wasn't related to until that age and I don't struggle with the female of the species now.

i ultimately think there's something fairly hypocritical about sending one's children to one when you have no religious belief yourself - i kind of had the opposite problem, where i went to a serious C of E school (serious, in terms of learning psalms off by heart, going to the cathedral twice a week, assemblies held by the local reverend every week) while my parents were muslim.

i appreciate the fairly amazing start i got from that school, but i can't help thinking its healthier not to make your children okay with professing beliefs they don't have on a daily basis just for the sake of getting good 'ahead' in the world

It was never the case for me though. I just think a lot of people are very quick to slag off 'religious' schools without knowing much about them. My RE teacher was Catholic and very much wasn't but he was a good and considerate teacher. My coursework was pretty much about how God probably didn't exist and how if he did I felt no obligation to him and I got an A for it. Religious education isn't intriniscally about brainwashing people or inhibiting independent thought. Not any more, anyway.

but i think i would try and find an equally good state alternative before i sent a child to a school which sells itself as religious (no matter how much independent thought is encouraged). it's not completely meaningless for a school to market itself that way, even though it might be an open secret most people are sending their children there to get a good education as opposed to religious instruction.

Religious schools - good ones anyway - aren't about imparting a certain set of beliefs. They're about encouraging a certain way of thinking. Thinking that can be applied to any number of disparate disciplines.

And it should go without saying - as a parent, you reserve the right to overwrite, contradict or amend whatever crap they teach your children at school, when they get home. If you can be fucked.

I haven't personally attacked you in any post. If you refuse to deny a child a decent education as a result of your own misapprehensions, then YOU need to examine if you're fit to bring up children in the first place. That's not an insult - that's FACT.

1) Three people now have explained to you how they attended religious schools, didn't come out as bible thumpers and you're STILL making this same point. Why?

2) Again, why are you STILL making this utterly worthless argument about how single-sex schools stop children from making friends with the opposite sex even as you're conceding here that none of that matters?

3) I make a point intending to illustrate how private schools contain children from a variety of backgrounds and you respond with this. Jesus Christ...

4) I didn't assume you were talking about "white/Christian" folk. Your inability to understand simple statements just ensured you read it that way. I could have written "rich/Jewish/girls" and the point would have been exactly the same.

A friend of the family used to be headteacher of a school in rural West Wales that had a lot of hippies and communal types, and there was a steiner school in the area as well. His school had a lot of kids whose parents had taken them out of the steiner schools once they'd realised that they were about 8 or 9 years old and couldn't actually read and write.

Surely there was a bright side in that their parents got to pay a few thousand quid a term to teach children how to 'interact' in much the same manner as every other child in the world learns to do on their own anyway?

she and her three siblings are split on whether it did them any good. i went every summer for quite a few years and as a kid it's a great time - no cars, very safe, very friendly. now i find it hard to imagine living there, partly because it's now a quasi-commune with private elements and also because it offers very little in the way of excitement. still an interesting concept however.

on a side note, my boss brought her daughter in today so instead of working I was giving her piggybacks up and down the corridor and she kept spinning my chair round whilst I was trying to work. KIDS ARE BLOODY ACE :)